Collette Calls: The Last 365

Jason has been helping fantasy owners since 1999 at RotoJunkie, Fanball, Baseball Prospectus and now here at RotoWire. He covers the Tampa Bay Rays at theprocessreport.net. You can hear Jason weekly on many of the Sirius/XM Fantasy channel offerings throughout the season as well as on the Towers of Power Baseball Hour Podcast on iTunes. He was selected as the Fantasy Baseball Writer of the Year by FSWA in 2013.

Over the past calendar year, there is an outfielder that has totaled 660 plate appearances. He has hit 25 doubles, three triples, 28 home runs, and has stolen 23 bases. Despite that counting category production, he is hitting .211/.273/.404 and fantasy owners are actively talking about cutting this player that was a top 40 draft pick this year - B.J. Upton.

It is admittedly impossible to not get frustrated about how a player like Upton and other similar players are struggling in 2013 as we are one-third of the way through the season. Around this time, I always find it helpful to look back over the past calendar year to see who are the leaders in the standard 5x5 categories. I find it sometimes tempers excitement with certain players who have been great recently but not so much over a larger sample size while others can somewhat sneak up on you about how great they have actually been.

A classic example of this is Aramis Ramirez. Over the past calendar year, he has has a .409 weighted on base average. wOBA is based on linear weights to measure a player's overall offensive contributions and was created by Tom Tango (who should be a must read for you & Twitter follow at @tangotiger). That .409 wOBA for Ramirez trails only three players in that timeframe: Miguel Cabrera (.443), Joey Votto (.435), & Buster Posey (.411). Yes, he is one point ahead of Mike Trout, but I could have given you 20 guesses and you never would have made the correct choice.

With that said, here are the top-10 lists for each of the standard categories over the past 365 days.

Hunter may be getting up there in age, but you would never know it from the .325/.373/.452 slash line he has put up over this last 665 plate appearances. Scutaro continues to surprise; someone that struggled to hit in Colorado but is hitting .330/.369/.435 over his last 701 plate appearances.

RBI is a stat of opportunity, but these 10 guys are making the most of it. Fielder's 119 is impressive considering Cabrera is often cleaning the table in front of him. Craig having more RBI than Pujols is equally impressive as Craig did not have a Mike Trout in front of him to drive in.

Masterson should be the surprise there, but that is how good his 2013 work has been. The improvement to his slider and his sequencing has been rather dramatic this season, something Terry Francona discussed last month with Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer:

Q: What about his slider? You've talked a lot about it in the first month of the season.

A: "His breaking ball (slider), at times, has been outstanding. He's even mixing in a change-up from time to time. The slider is bigger, sharper and has more depth. It's been a really good one.
"He can back door a left-hander with it or wrap it around his ankle. Or he can freeze a right-hander. It gives him a lot of options."

I never would have guessed Bumgarner had more strikeouts over the past calendar year than Cole Hamels, David Price, Mat Latos, or Adam Wainwright. Dickey did most of his damage last year while focusing his damage this year on your ERA and WHIP.

Poor Shields. He makes the top 10 for strikeouts and WHIP, and comes in 62nd on the wins list with 11. If you had any doubts about Minor, it should be safe to erase them. He's held hitters to a .203 average over his last 31 games.